Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield believes that humans will live on the moon within thirty to forty years:
Commander Chris Hadfield, who captured the public’s imagination by tweeting thousands of pictures from space and recording David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’ at zero gravity, has predicted that a lunar base will be fully functional within his lifetime.
And within the next 70 years, he believes we could establish a base on Mars.
Commander Hadfield, 54, believes both goals are the next logical steps in human exploration.
This might happen, but as things stand it probably won’t be Canadians—or Americans—doing it.
China is setting its sights on moon exploration and India on Mars, to which it has sent a probe (fourth country to do so, and first Asian one).
Canada mirrors the United States in this area. Once best recognized in space exploration for the Space Shuttle’s Canadarm, it now hosts the Perimeter Institute, a centre for speculation in cosmology—fun but not the same thing.
Why boldly go when you can boldly speculate? And so much of the speculation these days seems aimed at avoiding evidence like the Big Bang and fine tuning, in favour of multiverses and many worlds.
Maybe we can’t have both.
Not to put a damper on ‘boldly going’ to another planet, but there might be a few technical details they have overlooked as to ever ‘boldly staying’ on another planet. The ‘biogeochemical foundation’ for a ‘friendly environment’ that is hospitable for man to live in, for an extended period of time, is far more difficult to maintain than most people seem to realize. This ‘minor’ ecology problem was highlighted by Biosphere 2.
These following sites have illustrations that shows some of the interdependent, ‘life-enabling’, biogeochemical complexity of the different types of bacterial life on Earth.,,,
All good points to consider. But if we care, it would be better to plan to go than sit around wondering why the space aliens haven’t landed yet. Maybe us is them. Or that was supposed to be the idea anyway (?).
It is a struggle to maintain ISS. There isn’t enough funding to even maintain equipment that we already have. It is highly improbable that any country will make enough sorties to study, built and equip structures in moon any time soon. Forget Mars.